Faith, Trust and Human Rights

This will be my last post to WatchBlog. I’d like to thank those
that set it up and run it, and all of you that have contributed. It’s
an excellent way to encourage intelligent discussion between people
with different views. Given the acrimony between both sides this
fall, I think it’s great that this sort of interchange exists. As a
goodbye I’d like to re-visit one final issue: human rights.

I've also pointed out many of the most persuasive arguments put forth
(on either side) are based on emotion,
not reality. This ties in to a recent post by AP titled Faith-Based
Reality, and Bush's latest campaign push:

This campaign boils down to a matter of trust: Who has earned the
trust of the American people? Who do they believe in?

And indeed - it does boil down to trust. It's not a question of what
Bush has accomplished, or plans to accomplish: it's a question of
whether you choose to accept his reasons for failure to accomplish.
Bush's economic numbers are weak; but he asks us to trust him that
they are the fault of the previous admininstration, and they would
have been worse if not for his tax cuts. Bush's war is expensive,
fatal to so far over 1000 servicemen, and was initiated for reasons
that were false; but he asks us to trust him that it was a reasonable
mistake, not panic, not deliberate manipulation. Bush failed to
prevent 9/11, but asks us to trust him that he did all he could to
stop terrorism, starting from the moment he assumed office.

And in a way it's not unreasonable. Nobody can always be right. But
when I put your trust in someone, I do expect them to always do
right - to make choices that I consider to be the right thing to do,
given the information available at the time. Part of that is being
smart, an insightful. Part of that is having a clear compass - having
moral values that match mine.

I cannot trust Bush. If I had to pick one reason, one litmus test for
his character, it would be his actions on human rights. Bush and his
colleagues started down a slippery
slope of weakening existing practises in early 2002, which led
eventually to widespread abuse and the Abu Ghraib fiasco. But it's
not over. Even after the Abu Ghraib scandal, a practise persists of
having suspected terrorists "disappear". Rumours of this were
finally confirmed after some leading Senators, including McCain,
pursued the matter, and discovered that the
CIA moved several prisoners out of Iraq in the past six months, to
some undisclosed location, "without notification to the International
Red Cross, congressional oversight committees, the Defense Department
or CIA investigators". This not the action of a few rogue elements: we
know that Rumsfeld
approved one such "disappearance" - and this was widely
publicized, and there was no public rebuke from above.

I find it upsetting that this sort of thing has continued, despite
public scandal, and continued in secrecy, long after the
administration publically
stated that the "Geneva Convention applied to all prisoners held
in Iraq".

I could talk about protecting American POWs in wartime, propaganda for
terrorists, and so on. I could go into legal detail of whether the
existing international law allows classifying prisoners as "illegal
combatants" without an independent judicial mechanism. You could go
on about military necessity (but if it's necessary, can't you find a
judge to agree with that?) and how much worse things were under Saddam
Hussein. But the bottom line is: I think it's just plain wrong.

When the US is in charge, as it is now in Iraq, there should be no
cases of prisoners "disappearing", no shadowy "ghost detainees" that
are hidden from the Red Cross, no covert prisons run away from prying
eyes. If we're there for any legitimate reason, it's to spread
democracy, and this is not what democracy is about. We cannot defend
American values for terrorists by abandoning belief in the value of
individual human life.

And I find it pretty hard to trust anyone that thinks otherwise.

Farewell all, Happy Halloween, and good luck on November 2. May the
best man win! --- and that's John Kerry, by the way :-)
Posted by William Cohen at October 29, 2004 3:34 PM